Healthy Competition

San Antonio won the It's Time Texas health challenge, but that doesn't mean the city is healthy

By Chris Warren

Photo Courtesy It's Time Texas

It was the sort of trash talk usually reserved for when the Spurs battle for an NBA Championship. In a video promoting the It’s Time Texas Community Challenge earlier this year, Mayor Ivy Taylor stood behind her desk with a bemused look on her face as she listened to Austin Mayor Steve Adler taunt her. “I want you to know we’re coming after you,” said Adler.

But Taylor seemed unconcerned about the possibility of losing the three-month challenge, in which individuals, schools, churches and businesses earn points for their hometown by documenting a range of healthy activities, like tracking their weight or taking a so-called “healthy selfie” (translated, that means a selfie of someone exercising or eating well). “That’s really cute, Steve,” she replied. “Everyone knows that trophy belongs to San Antonio.”

Taylor was right. When the points were tallied, a late surge of activity by Northeast ISD helped seal San Antonio’s victory in the Metro category (communities with 300,000 people or more), beating out Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston—for the third year in a row.

Bragging rights are great and everything, but nobody should think this victory means that San Antonio is a picture of health. According to a report released by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District last April, one of seven adults in Bexar County has diabetes and 71 percent of adults are obese or overweight. The percentage of San Antonians with diabetes is higher than either the Texas or national average, and it’s on the rise.

So while a little celebration for those who joined Taylor on one of her frequent walks or shed a few pounds during the competition may be justified, there’s plenty of work still to do. Plotting the best ways to improve the health of San Antonio and the entire state will be on the agenda when public officials, community, healthcare and business leaders gather this month in San Antonio for the It’s Time Texas Summit.

There will be two big announcements at the summit—both of which indicate that data and proven methods for bolstering public health will drive what It’s Time Texas does in the future. An initiative that has been in the works for a year will highlight effective public policy and programs, and a formal partnership between the University of Texas System and It’s Time Texas will be announced. Together, the entities will utilize data and monitoring to address chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

That means it’s likely in the future, cities will earn points for actually losing weight, rather than just wearing weight loss trackers. “This will change the landscape about how we are able to adjust based on the information we get,” says Megan Carvajal, vice president of investor relations at It’s Time Texas.

Only time will tell whether healthy selfies will make the cut.

Earning Points

San Antonio piled up 888,220 points to win the It’s Time Texas Community Challenge. To earn all of those points, businesses, schools, churches and regular citizens completed over 300,000 individual actions over the course of three months. Here are some of the activities that earned points: